Housing plan makes old ideas a new reality

One of the lessons Art History Professor David Brownlee has learned at the University is if at first you don't succeed, try again -- under a different administration. Eight years ago, Brownlee authored a report identifying the creation of communities-in-residence as a major priority. These communities would bring students in a particular residence together through common interests and innovative programming. The report, although advertised in Almanac and widely praised by administrators, was largely ignored, as was then-Vice Provost for University Life Kim Morrison's 1992 report recommending the creation of a college house system similar to the one in place at Yale. Brownlee and Morrison's reports echoed another set of recommendations issued in 1965 by Professor Otto Springer -- who later served as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences -- which also called for a residential community system. So last spring, when Brownlee was asked for the second time to develop a set of recommendations for building residential communities, his initial reaction was skepticism. "Are we really going to do it this time?" he asked Provost Stanley Chodorow. But several months after completing his report, Brownlee's initial doubts have been replaced by excitement and optimism. And his follow-up report -- which will be released in the next few weeks -- will represent the first attempt to implement, not just propose, a residential community plan. Earlier administrators were not interested in the idea, Brownlee said, which is why previous reports were never acted on. "There were always worries about predictable things? but all of them were sort of made up fears, they were sort of excuses for the not doing it," he said. "I really think it was just that the previous leadership of the University did not bring to it an interest in those sorts of things." Although some faculty and administrators describe Brownlee as a visionary who advocated the system before the idea was widely accepted, Brownlee said community living has had considerable support from professors and students for his entire 17-year tenure at the University. "There is no single recommendation that has been more uniformly brought forward by students and faculty than the recommendation that Penn's undergraduate residences must be organized around some sort of community," he said. Past experiments with community living programs, however, have met with mixed success. Of four college house pilot programs proposed in spring 1996, only two -- the non-residential Kelly Writers House and the Science and Technology Wing expansion into High Rise South -- attracted enough student interest to get off the ground. As a result, many administrators -- including Chodorow -- have said that any future programs must combat such negative student attitudes. "Students have to understand that residential communities will not take away from their residential experience," he said. "The Quad experience will remain the Quad experience." But Brownlee said current efforts to create the system take into account lessons learned from the 1996 pilot efforts, and future residential communities will not be dependent on a fixed number of participants. Instead, the programs are likely to be located within larger dormitories so they can grow or shrink with student demand. And students who are not attached to a specific program will be integrated into a community through increased programming and services in non-specialized floors of dorms like the high rises. For the most part, these changes would represent an improvement in current programming -- which Brownlee said is grossly underfunded -- rather than a huge departure from existing policy. And Brownlee wants to assuage any student fears that the new programming will be invasive. "No one is going to be out pounding on the doors saying 'come on out, we're having mandatory discussions of Kierkegaard'," he said. At the same time, he added that residential communities, unlike curricular improvements or hiring new professors, provides the sole opportunity to improve all undergraduate life in one step.